


with a whimper, not with a bang

by Contra



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 02:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19843843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: afterwards, it's all blank pages. // or: baby, we'll always have another apocalypse (crowley x aziraphale and the end of the world)





	with a whimper, not with a bang

**Author's Note:**

> Title from T.S. Eliot - The Hollow Men

_This is the way the world ends_  
_This is the way the world ends_  
_This is the way the world ends_  
_Not with a bang but with a whimper._

The first time they notice it, it’s tea time. The thing is, angels and demons don’t really care about time, it just moves forward after all, not really that interesting, and tea time? It matters even less.

Except it does for Crowley and Aziraphale, because time is precious and tea is precious too, and yet all of that pales in the greater-than-the-sum-of-its-partness of sitting together in a bookshop with a steaming hot cup and just talking, the only angel and the only demon to ever do this, and its familiar and brand new and exhilarating.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says. “You’re different.”

Aziraphale is different every morning.

Aziraphale is always the same.

Aziraphale looks at Crowley with huge, frightened eyes and says, “I know.”

They can’t put it into words first.

“Is this what falling feels like?” Aziraphale asks once and he’s terrified. It’s like he’s less and simultaneously more. Not in the way people talking about politics on the TV feel like these days (they don’t care about stuff like that), but the way the ocean feels – you can thirst at the same time and drown.

Crowley shakes his head. He doesn’t even _remember_ falling. He just woke up with bruises one morning and couldn’t find his way home.

Except he did and it’s here, it’s this bookshop, and there’s something going on with Aziraphale, who closes the curtains because he’s hurt by the light.

Crowley doesn’t think about the ocean, the very first ocean, the things it spat out, the things that grew from the things it spat out, the things that grew from the things that-

They go out the next day, to St. James Park, they feed the ducks, they eat carrot cake they bought at Harrods. Aziraphale wears Crowley’s old pair of sunglasses and they both pretend it’s a lovely gesture and nothing more.

Crowley throws up that night.

He hasn’t thrown up in millennia.

(-grew from the things that grew from the things that grew from the things it spat out.

Everything has to start somewhere. )

They’re alright. They have their books and their plants and the planet. Aziraphale rubs his back and comforts him in long dead languages.

They have tea the next day. They _have_ the next day.

It’s not just them, that’s the thing. The Earth has a fever. Everyone chalks it up to climate change, carbon emissions, all that stuff.

Crowley thinks about a different kind of heat, and a different kind of home.

Neither of them says it.

At first.

They still have good days, that’s the thing. Aziraphale finds a first edition Goethe. Crowley finds a black shirt with the pink-sequined words _Goth Bitch_ on it.

They crawl into bed with each other, murmur sweet nothings in Babylonian, Mesopotamian, Ancient Greek.

Sometimes, their tongues stumble, though.

“It’s too bright,” Aziraphale says, except he says it Aramaic, and for the first time it takes Crowley a while to understand it.

When he answers, his voice is calm. “It’s too warm.”

Maybe it’s heaven, maybe it’s hell. None of them understand it. Maybe it’s both. Neither.

Everything has to end somewhere, Crowley thinks, he’s looking out at a butterfly that’s sitting on a Hydrangea and it’s the first time one of them thinks it.

The butterflies vanish.

They both notice, but no one else does.

And then the Hydrangea, too.

“Maybe this is the end,” Aziraphale says. For the last weeks he had worn Crowley’s sunglasses, even indoors. Yesterday he’d woken up and had no eyes anymore.

Crowley hadn’t minded, the physical form had always only been a disguise anyway, a children’s game, a costume.

They have no idea what this is, but it’s _real._

The most surprising thing is how calm it is.

“I’d have thought,” Crowley murmurs, and his voice is not words anymore, it’s low rumbling thunder and electricity humming “that the end would be louder. You know. It was supposed to be the Anti-Christ. Big flashing hole in the ground and holy dumbasses riding down from heaven with trumpets and swords. Not like this. This is-

weird.”

Big chunks go missing at a time. The colour green. Lunchtime. Egoism. Some musical notes.

The weirder thing is, life goes on. Like a river. A leaking wound. Humans still exist and the weirdest thing is, Crowley and Aziraphale aren’t sure if they even notice. If they know that the world has ever been something other than this.

Crowley starts passing through their furniture like a ghost. “I think I’m getting less real,” he says.

There’s a battered collector’s edition of Philipp Pullman’s _His Dark Materials_ on the table that is missing, among other things, all instances of the letter z or references to trees. “Maybe it’s not you getting less real,” Aziraphale says. “Maybe it’s the entire rest of the world”

The sky is still there and they watch it.

Everything is still so incredibly calm. Maybe it’s meant to end like this. Neither of them says it.

If this is the Ineffable Plan, then there’s no use anyway.

One morning they wake up and all humans speak the same language. “Babel has fallen” Crowley whispers and his angel presses up against him, heavenly soul into heavenly soul, and they just watch it for a moment.

“It’s unraveling,” Aziraphale murmurs. “Like an old sweater. Like a spool”

“Like a roll of toilet paper that got into the hands of a cat,” Crowley says, and they haven’t seen cats in a while. Haven't seen God either, but that's par for the course.

“We aren’t scared,” Aziraphale says finally and it’s not a question.

Crowley looks at him for a long time “No, I suppose we are not.”

It’s strange, that hours can exist and seconds can exist, but minutes are gone. It’s strange, that the sky can exist and love can exist, but not the next Monday morning.

Humans walk naked in foreign bodies that they aren’t ashamed of. It’s a world without fruit.

“Angel,” Crowley whispers, they’re by the ocean because the ocean is the only thing that still feels mostly the same. Aziraphale looks at him and eyes don’t exist anymore but love does-

(thatgrewfromthethingsthatgrewfromthethingsthatgrewfromthethingsthatgrew)

-love does “Angel, do you think it will end in a garden?”

They haven’t thought about heaven and hell and home for a while.

Aziraphale shrugs. “What time do you think it is?” he asks back, and it’s a pointless question, the same way that when you’re standing on the South Pole, the only direction that exists is North, but Crowley kisses him anyway, mouthless and desperate, “About tea time, I think.”

It doesn’t end like a battle, with winners and losers, it doesn’t even end with a lingering chord like a song.

They just stand there until there is no there and until there is no them and just like that

it is over.


End file.
